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Aerobic Exercise – The Secret Benefit

Okay, you’ve heard all the health reasons you should do aerobic exercises. You know, like it increases blood flow to your muscles and makes you healthier. Maybe you’ve even heard that aerobic exercise causes the small blood vessels in your body to expand which helps carry away toxins. But, what the health folks aren’t sharing with you is one little secret. Aerobic exercise will also make you even more beautiful than you already are.

What happens?

Let’s see why that happens by taking another look at skin. Your skin is fed by millions of tiny blood vessels just underneath the surface. You’ve undoubtedly experienced being red faced in the past. For instance, when you walked out of the bathroom trailing toilet paper on your shoe or when you’ve had to run to catch a bus or chasing a two year old or when you’ve become overheated. All that flushing and blushing is caused when the blood vessels just under your skin expand.

When your blood vessels expand during aerobic exercise, more oxygen rich blood is delivered to your skin cells and that nourishes them. When you exercise, not only do the blood vessels expand, but toxins are carted away. Here’s how it works on the whole toxin thing. Let’s be totally gross for a minute. Think of your cells as pooping machines. Science calls this process the metabolic by-products of cells. Your cells take in nutrients, use them and spit out what they don’t need – metabolic by-products – cell poop. Your cells don’t like to sit in their own waste any more than you would like to sit at the bottom of a latrine. When they are forced to do this, they become unhealthy. When the cells of your body become unhealthy it shows within you by you not feeling perky and outside in the appearance of your skin, hair and nails.

Scientific proof

Just in case you need a little extra convincing of how important it is to do aerobic exercises, consider this experiment done on mice at the University of Pittsburg. There were two groups of mice. One was a control group allowed to run in their cage and the other was forced to use a treadmill for 15 minutes every day for 1 week. This was the training period. After the week, the time was increased to 50 minutes a day for an additional 3 weeks. Are you ready for this? After the test period, the collagen levels in the mice increased 70% to 200%. (Just in case you forgot, collagen is the big gun in having beautiful skin and hair.) Helloooo.

Now here’s another study. If this doesn’t convince you, nothing will. This study was conducted by McMaster University researchers in Hamilton. Mice that were genetically altered to age faster were forced to run on a treadmill for 45 minutes, three times a week. After five months, the mice that were exercised looked as young, vibrant, sleek coated and healthy as their wild relatives. The caged mice were balding, shrinking and turning grey and huddled in a corner of their cage barely able to move. Also, (we need a giant drum roll here) the exercised mice not only didn’t experience age related deterioration, they actually experienced a reversal of the aging process.

Conclusion

Now that you know the big secret to youth and beauty is aerobic exercise. It’s time for a word of caution. If you’re activity has been limited to pushing the buttons on the TV remote or pounding your fingers on the keyboard (like me). Take it slow when you start cardiovascular exercise. The Mayo clinic suggests a fast paced five minute walk as a starting point. Also, if you have any medical conditions, talk to your doctor. Too much aerobic exercise, too fast can be a very unhealthy choice.